News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:My Addressbook? Keep it. Telephone numbers are a disgrace... by brk on Thursday February 09, 2012 @07:02AM (#3570749)
Yes, but DNS also assumes there is exactly one match for a given text string.

In RL, there are a lot of "John Smiths", and it would be non-trivial for a system to figure out which one you wanted to call without some serious hinting (like access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, G+, etc. accounts), and it might even have to access a private list of names/numbers to figure out that you probably want the John Smith who works with Alice Bell (an entry in your phonebook)...

Re:My Addressbook? Keep it. Telephone numbers are a disgrace... by andreasklinger on Thursday February 09, 2012 @07:49AM (#3570883)
We made it work for emails. And guessing an email of someone (which is hard to do) something that stopped us to adopt emails.

if its someone you have him in your friendcircle->app

I believe we need a proper open identity system in general but this could be a start.

The solution wont be facebook.com/nickname nor vox.io/nickname

It will be providerOrContextOrWorkplaces.com/name maybe

Re:My Addressbook? Keep it. Telephone numbers are a disgrace... by Dylan16807 on Thursday February 09, 2012 @08:40AM (#3571049)
I trust a verbal number exchange far more than a verbal email/id exchange.
Re:My Addressbook? Keep it. Telephone numbers are a disgrace... by andreasklinger on Thursday February 09, 2012 @09:03AM (#3571132)
why?
Re:My Addressbook? Keep it. Telephone numbers are a disgrace... by Dylan16807 on Thursday February 09, 2012 @09:17AM (#3571170)
How do you spell that no wait did you say M is that upper or lower case how do I type an underscore into this thing oh the word underscore was that .net or .biz too late I typed .com automatically.

The places I've seen that give automatic email addresses have used a formula like first initial, last name, autoincrementing number. I think this is a pretty good system, but if you go worldwide you're going to get nice big numbers - entering name and number almost exactly like you do already. But if you misspell something based on a verbal communication it breaks harder.

Re:My Addressbook? Keep it. Telephone numbers are a disgrace... by mjwalshe on Thursday February 09, 2012 @08:54AM (#3571101)
realy [email protected] is unique looking up some one by name in a countrys phone book is not!

How may John Smith's are there in your country ?

Re:My Addressbook? Keep it. Telephone numbers are a disgrace... by theon144 on Thursday February 09, 2012 @07:10AM (#3570771)
Why not use the same system any web service in existence already uses - nicknames? Any text string is still easier to remember than an arbitrary number.
Re:My Addressbook? Keep it. Telephone numbers are a disgrace... by brk on Thursday February 09, 2012 @07:44AM (#3570871)
I've been using the nick 'brk' for maybe 20 years, but I still frequently come across random places where it has already been taken.

So, you'd need a nick registry, like domain names, and you'd run into issues with your friends that have "common" nicks having to register and use a different name. I think this merely trades one well-known set of limitations for a much different and less understood set of limitations without actually truly solving anything.